William Dart listens to sister acts: Rosemary and Betty Clooney, The Shangri-Las, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, The Roches, and especially a new album from Tegan and Sara Quin.
Tegan and Sara, Hey, I'm Just Like You cover image Photo: Sire Records
There’s something about women in sisterly song … even with dodgy sexual politics
That's Rosemary and Betty Clooney, in 1954, with one of the hits from Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, a classic of sibling rivalry that’s been a gift from heaven to cabaret campers.
But a new release from Tegan and Sara reminds us that sisters — and these two Canadian twins are veterans of 20 years of recording — can still pack a punch.
As did the two sets of twins that made up the Shangri-Las back in in the 60s. Mary and Betty Weiss and Margie and Mary Ann Ganser. They might have lost their hearts to the motorcycle-revving Leader of the Pack but elsewhere, they stood their ground.
We can now see that so many seemingly innocent pop songs of this period, written in the years of a burgeoning women’s liberation, were far from unaware of what was going on out there. And Lesley Gore’s 'You don’t own me' can rightly assume anthem status.
A just reward for a song that suffered the indignity of being covered by everyone from Percy Faith and his Orchestra to Elaine Page.
The all-girl cello group Rasputina gave it the equivalent of an arthouse outing, while Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn and Diane Keaton sauntered through it as the theme song for the pretty forgettable 1996 movie, The First Wives Club.
Then just a few years ago, the song was rediscovered and revitalized. By the young Australian singer Grace, teaming up for a bit of politico to-and-fro with the US rapper, G-Eazy.
It’s a spectacular rejigging, produced by the eternally hip Quincy Jones, who incidentally, did the same for the original Lesley Gore recording back in 1963.
Sister groups are one of the staples of Western popular music over the last century, from the Boswells and the Andrews through to The Flirtations and The Pointers.
And who could resist the languid soul of Andy Bey and the Bey sisters.
Back in the 80s, I must confess that it was occasionaly the Nolan sisters who put me in the mood for dancing.
A few years before that, the tender, often bittersweet songs of Kate and Anna McGarrigle revealed the gentle, subtle power of sisterly communion … in songs such as 'Talk to me of Mendocino', 'Heart like a Wheel' and, of course, 'Tell my sister'.
Following Kate McGarrigle’s death in 2010, there was a handful of posthumous releases, none more welcome than that of a1982 Toronto concert which appeared four years ago.
There’s a wild raucousness here that could be classified as musical entrapment. The song 'Love Over and Over' was an unexpected attempt to appeal to a dancefloor audience, coming out as a 12 inch single at the time. But there are also words and attitudes to be taken from it, ranging from a neat referencing of the Bronte sisters, to Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s world-weary take on the torments of love.
Another sisterly force, The Roches, suffered a loss too, when Maggie Roche died in 2017, closing off what had been almost four decades of unpredictable folkish fun, following on from their first introductions on that 1979 debut, with a few vocal flurries hinting at a cappella joys to come.
Tegan and Sara Quin didn’t introduce themselves by name on their first album in 1999 but they certainly spelt out what they were standing for with unflinching high-strum ardour in a song by Sara titled ‘Proud’.
By Tegan and Sara’s third album, 2002’s If It Was You, the two women had become pretty adept at playing the genre game. Songs went places that you weren’t expecting them to go.
There were mysteries to be encountered in a number like ‘Don’t Confess’ and an urgency to another, titled ‘Terrible Storm’, that went beyond the merely meterological.
One of the cleverest was ‘City Girl’, an ambling four-chorder that could have been a Brill Building baby.
2009’s Sainthood was the group’s sixth album and one that took on some pretty weighty issues.
They described it themselves as addressing secular themes of devotion, delusion, and exemplary behavior in the pursuit of love and relationships. All the time, admitting that its title was borrowed with great respect from the lyrics of a Leonard Cohen song, ‘Came so far for Beauty’.
Sainthood found Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie once more in the producer’s chair, this time with Howard Redekopp casting an almost pyrotechnic sheen over Sara’s song ‘Alligator’.
Set out over catchy syncopations that could wear a Luther Vandross chart rather fetchingly, it’s a remarkably clear-eyed acceptance of a relationship being over, from alligator tears and hissy fits to some sort of closure.
While I’m not casting aspersions on Tegan and Sara’s next two albums, 2013’s Hearththrob and 2016’s Love You to Death, it’s a 2017 project that seems to me to stand out as their chief achievement over that period of time.
Tegan and Sara Present The Con X: Covers saw them working with various artists to produce a series of cover versions of the songs off the pair’s 2007 album The Con.
Cyndi Lauper is the biggest name here, working her wiles on the song ‘Back in your Head’.
Elsewhere, there’s a fair bit of misty romanticism swirling about – perhaps too much for some sensibilities. Even if Mykko Blanco, taking on the track ‘Knife Going In’, offers respite with a doomy rap.
But my sensibilities were first touched by the song ‘Burn your life down’, sung by Jack Antonoff (who’s recently been in the news producing Taylor Swift’s latest album Lover). It’s a ballad of mumbled desperation, with some eerie off-screen trumpet in its second verse. And it's especially effective, conveying incendiary heartbreak through the voice of a man.
Tegan and Sara’s latest release, Hey, I’m Just Like You, comes with a title that couldn’t be beaten for beckoning at a potential audience.
It’s come together after a bit of a break in their music-making – a break that saw them looking into demos that the sisters had been making as teenagers, 20 or more years ago.
Not content just to write about those times in a lively memoir titled High School, Tegan and Sara have also given a fuller life to a dozen of the forgotten demos. Their current shows in the States feature them reading from the book, playing the tunes and showing a few old home movies, including footage of the bedroom in which the music was initially created.
Deep down in these new old songs there’s a lot of anguish: regrets, recriminations and above all, the whole business of coming out and expressing that in music.
The video for the title song uses some of those old childhood movies that the women have been recently airing on the concert stage. And note that the extremely significant lyrics are there on the screen complete with an old time bouncing ball just in case you want to sing along.
There’s some unsettling time-tripping in the songs on Hey, I’m Just Like You, as the 39-year-old Tegan and Sara Quin revisit their soul-searching years of two decades ago. Times of brooding teenagerhood lightened up in the super pop gleam of Alex Hood’s production.
In fact, the whole album is an all-woman affair, from engineer Rachael Findlen, mixer Beatriz Artola to Carla Azar on drums and Catherine Hiltz on bass.
I can’t help thinking of that old adage that those who don’t know their history are doomed to re-live it. Listening through to these new Tegan and Sara songs, there’s a history here in which many – perhaps in their teenage years right now – could well find support and spiritual sustenance.
What else would one expect from a true sister?
Music Details
'Song title' (Composer) – Performers
Album title
(Label)
'Sisters' (Berlin) – Rosemary Clooney and Betty Clooney
Come On-A My House
(Columbia)
'Right now and not later' (Mosely et al) – The Shangri-Las
The Shangri-Las Greatest Hits
(Spectrum)
'You Don't Own Me' (Madara, White) – Grace feat G-Eazy
single
(Sony)
'Willow weep for me' (Ronell) – Andy Bey and the Bey Sisters
Andy Bey and the Bey Sisters
(Prestige)
'Tell my sister' (K McGarrigle) – Kate & Anna McGarrigle
Kate & Anna McGarrigle
(Hannibal)
'Love Over and Over' (K, A McGarrigle) – Kate & Anna McGarrigle
Live In Toronto, May '82
(Air Cuts)
'We' (M, T, S Roche) – The Roches
The Roches
(Warner)
'Proud' (S Quin) – Tegan and Sara
Under Feet Like Ours
(Superclose)
'City Girl' (T Quin) – Tegan and Sara
If It Was You
(Vapor)
'Came So Far for Beauty' (Cohen) – Leonard Cohen
Recent Songs
(Sony)
'Alligator' (T, S Quin) – Tegan and Sara
Sainthood
(Sire)
'Burn Your Life Down' (S Quin) – Bleachers
Tegan and Sara Present the Con X: Covers
(Warner)
'Hey, I'm Just Like You' (T, S Quin) – Tegan and Sara
Hey, I'm Just Like You
(Sire)
'Please Help Me' (T, S Quin) – Tegan and Sara
Hey, I'm Just Like You
(Sire)
